Various devices are available for wrapping produce and/or meats for retail sale purposes. Typically, these wrapping devices utilize a roll of wrapping material which is supported thereon, a wrapping platform, an electrical heat severing rod or wire and a heat sealing platform. After the article has been wrapped, the heat severing rod or wire is used to sever the wrapping material and the wrapped article is placed on the heat sealing platform for sealing purposes. In general, these wrapping devices have a number of inherent common disadvantages. For example, the loading of a new roll of wrapping material requires the insertion of a shaft through the core of roll of wrapping material, the insertion of oppositely disposed end caps on the shaft into the ends of the roll of wrapping material, the loosening of cap members and mating bearing blocks on the wrapping device to accommodate the ends of the shaft supporting the roll of wrapping material, the lifting of the shaft and roll of wrapping material and placement of same onto the bearing blocks on the device, and the tightening of the cap members and bearing blocks to retain the shaft and the roll of wrapping material on the device. Because of this, loading of a roll of wrapping material into the wrapping device is a time consuming operation. In addition, since the shaft is received through the core of the roll of wrapping material before loading into the wrapping device, the resulting assembly of shaft and roll of wrapping material is quite heavy and cumbersome causing some operators to have difficulty in placing the assembly within the wrapping device. Lastly, most of the presently available wrapping devices do not include adequate brake means to maintain the free end of the roll of wrapping material taut in order to prevent the undesired unrolling of same. Such undesired unrolling of the roll of wrapping material results in the wrapping material "doubling back on itself" within the wrapping device causing machine downtime, loss of production and waste of wrapping material.
Because of the foregoing, it has become desirable to develop apparatus for preventing the undesired unrolling of a roll of wrapping material and for permitting the easy insertion of the roll into a wrapping device.